Carry My Heart
VIDEO & ANIMATION | MFA Thesis Project
Beryl is a mineral made of beryllium aluminum cyclosilicate, Be3Al2(SiO3)6 for short. You might also know it as emerald or aquamarine. It’s also my maternal great grandmother’s name. Both make an appearance in this video loop. You might even call it an ode to Beryl. The most present yet elusive character in the family archive I collected, she died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 1938. Losing her mother was a traumatic experience for my grandmother who was eight at the time. Despite my grandmother’s reticence when it came to her family and childhood, we’ve suddenly come to know Beryl through the plethora of items she left behind.
I choreographed a simple sequence to the chorus of a sappy song——Carry My Heart. (That’s the extent of the lyrics.) The genre is Americana——it’s languid with a twang, and my motions match that tone. However, Fragments of face and rock animate over my motions, a full-body mask. The nested screen that hides my body expands at the end of the loop, filling the screen as I run backwards to begin the sequence again.
Beryl is a mineral made of beryllium aluminum cyclosilicate, Be3Al2(SiO3)6 for short. You might also know it as emerald or aquamarine. It’s also my maternal great grandmother’s name. Both make an appearance in this video loop. You might even call it an ode to Beryl. The most present yet elusive character in the family archive I collected, she died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 1938. Losing her mother was a traumatic experience for my grandmother who was eight at the time. Despite my grandmother’s reticence when it came to her family and childhood, we’ve suddenly come to know Beryl through the plethora of items she left behind.
I choreographed a simple sequence to the chorus of a sappy song——Carry My Heart. (That’s the extent of the lyrics.) The genre is Americana——it’s languid with a twang, and my motions match that tone. However, Fragments of face and rock animate over my motions, a full-body mask. The nested screen that hides my body expands at the end of the loop, filling the screen as I run backwards to begin the sequence again.